Stefan's Thoughts

I’ve always heard people say “Life is too short”, and never quite knew what they meant by it. Is it that our time here is limited, and we should make the best of it? I didn’t understand, called bullshit on it and did quietly mocked them — they sounded stupid. Plain ignorance on my part, really.

It wasn’t until recently I visited the 9/11 Memorial in New York City did I fully fathom the meaning of this. It was an emotionally charged place, a place for reflection; all that life, memories and stories gone in a few hours. For me thinking back to that event, I was only in Grade 7, so innocent and hadn’t heard of the term ‘terrorist‘ before then. 9/11 opened me up to a world of scary, the world was dangerous. 11 years on, I have a greater understanding of what transpired that day; the events leading up to it and the aftermath from both sides.

You might be thinking, I went to the Memorial and somehow I had an epiphany and understood ‘Life’s too short’. Well that’s not what happened. The epiphany came after the memorial when I decided to go to the Museum Shop and got myself a pin and the official National Geographic Memorial Book. I ate up the book fairly quickly and thought I had a fairly good idea of what had happened that day.

It wasn’t until I came to a section where they explained the exhaustive process they had to go through in arranging the victims names. Basically, Howard Lutnick was suppose to be in the North Tower that day but was late to the office because he took his son, Kyle on his first day to school– his company was based on the 101st to 105th floors.

Six hundred and fifty-eight people. My brother Gary, my best friend Doug, 200 people who I personally hired, great people. We had a rule at the firm that we should hire our friends, that life’s too short, we wanted to work with people we liked. And that rule not only applied to me where I hired my best friend and brother, but it also applied to the guys who were the security guards who worked with their brother and their brother-in-law. We lost them all that day. Unthinkable. Impossible. (P.172, A Place of Remembrance)

658 of the 1,000 employees of Cantor Fitzgerald were lost that day, 38 husbands left pregnant wives behind, 46 weddings were planned, 955 sons and daughters lost a father or a mother.  This is where it hit me, it made me understand since it resonates with me I am working with people I like, and the victims were in the same boat, they knew each other. What the hell right?

Life is short, I am getting a better understanding why people do say it but at the same time struggling with the fact; I have x amount of time here — Am I doing what I really want to do? What do I want to achieve? And wow, I need to be more thankful what I do have and make better use of time that is given to me.